


Don't Break Character

by tothewillofthepeople



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Character Study, Coming Out, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, Mild Sexual Content, Nightmares, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Richie Tozier, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Stanley Uris Lives But Is Not Mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:22:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28634676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothewillofthepeople/pseuds/tothewillofthepeople
Summary: It takes one day for a fan to notice.WAS ANYONE GONNA TELL ME RICH TOZIER IS A HE/THEY OR DID I HAVE TO READ THAT IN HIS TWITTER BIO MYSELF??
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 86
Kudos: 482
Collections: Have read this didn't forgot to save





	1. a calm stretch of water

**Author's Note:**

> this is just a fic about richie being nonbinary :)
> 
> some outdated or clumsy discussions about gender within, but this is mostly pretty lighthearted.
> 
> title from ["be still" by the killers.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc4I9MweBy4)

The question is a long time coming, probably.

There are a lot of…new things on the internet these days, enough that Richie feels like he processes more information in an hour on Twitter than he did for his entire high school career. The kids are being _stans._ They’re making _fancams._ They use _pronouns._

“Everyone uses pronouns, jackass,” Steve says, the first time Richie asks him about it.

“Yeah,” Richie says, “but why does everyone put them next to their name now?”

“Trans solidarity, or whatever,” Steve says. “’Normalizing.’ Kid shit, you know. Identity politics or whatever.”

“Oh,” Richie says. “Cool.” He doesn’t feel like he understands anything.

In bed that night, he snoops on the profiles of each of his friends. None of them with a social media presence have their pronouns in their bios, but Stan’s wife Patty does. _She/her,_ right under her name, and above the name of the school where she works. Huh. Okay. Not just for kids, then.

He turns to Google, intending to type _they them_ into the search bar and go from there, but he gets sidetracked by one of the tabs he already has open (the bottlenose dolphin Wikipedia page, which is Mike’s fault) and then before he knows it, 2am has come and gone and he’s deeply entrenched in reading about even-toed ungulates. He tosses his phone aside mid-sentence to fall asleep, and it isn’t until two days later that he remembers he was going to do some goddamn research.

Here’s a bit he’s been workshopping: “I haven’t been dating much lately. Guys my age are supposed to be married and trying to stay down-low about the fact that they’re cheating on their wives, or divorced because they weren’t really down-low at all. Buying gold necklaces for the mistress, fuck you very much Alan Rickman! But that wasn’t my route. I was too scared to suck a dick inside or outside of a marriage, ya know? Now that I’m Out-with-a-capital-O, people keep expecting me to have some sort of relationship on lock, but the only thing that has changed are the slurs people put on my Instagram posts. But I do have one casual thing going. No, no, don’t cheer, it’s complicated! See, I keep getting massively fucked by my own attention span—”

It devolves into stupid jokes about stopping in the middle of watching porn to go check the mail. He does an impression of that dog from the animated movie with all the balloons, the one that keeps interrupting itself mid-word to yell _squirrel!_ Really riveting stuff, but he has fun telling it.

So it’s a new morning and he’s drinking orange juice and then he remembers the little burning curiosity, the edge of something half-fearful and half-starving. He takes another meditative sip of juice and picks up his phone.

He could just ask his friends, but that feels too…pointed. Richie does not want to be perceived. So he tweets it to his seven hundred thousand Twitter followers instead:

_@TrashmouthTozier  
okay explain it to me like i’m five years old. what does nonbinary mean_

Then he puts his phone down and goes grocery shopping, because he’s out of milk and he had to eat dry Cheerios for breakfast.

He forces himself not to check his phone until he gets back home, because he is aware that it’s bad for his mood in the long run if he sits and watches the notifications tumble in. More than once he’s found himself stopped in the middle of an aisle in the grocery store or whatever, scrolling for an interminable number of minutes. So he focuses instead on the milk, the soft brioche that he likes, frozen pizzas, a carton of raspberries, the coffee that Eddie favors, even if Eddie never comes around to drink it.

Wind in his hair and sun in his face as he walks home with his arms full of bags. One person stops him on the street to say they’re a _big fan—_ Richie jokes about extorting their help to carry his groceries and then smiles for a selfie. When he gets home he puts away the food and then, only then, sits down on the couch and goes to look at what his followers have to say.

Some link him straight to the _Non-binary gender_ Wikipedia page. Some offer a succinct definition of their own. Some say stuff that he genuinely thinks is funny, little jokes about having no gender, or their gender being the moon.

A couple of the responses are just people being dicks, which isn’t surprising. One person calls it _Some stupid fucking internet trend._ Richie quote tweets that one and says, _just like your mom’s nudes!_ The other ones, the nastier ones, he doesn’t respond to.

He’s weeded out a lot of assholes among his fans since he started cracking jokes about sucking dick, but he knows there’s a contingent that has stuck around in the hopes of his sexuality being some sort of long-con. Like any day now he’ll get back to jokes about fucking MILFs and treating hypothetical girlfriends like garbage.

But he’s not gonna do that. He would treat a hypothetical boyfriend as well as he could. Cook for him a lot. Loan him a bunch of oversized t-shirts. Listen when he went off on rants about work, or traffic, or improperly-labelled allergens. He’d definitely make fun of him for all of that stuff too, but like, fondly.

He tries not to think about the fact that the hypothetical boyfriend is Eddie-shaped. That way madness lies.

Richie sighs and keeps digging around on Twitter.

The next thing that happens is a #nonbinaryandproud hashtag that starts trending within an hour. Richie scrolls through, and sees a lot of photos of a lot of different people. Folks with dyed green hair and a plethora of piercings, folks who are young and pretty and androgynous. 

But also plenty of folks who don’t look like that. There are people who have stubble, people who wear dresses. Sometimes both. A lot of people in the tag don’t seem to realize that it started in the comments of his stupid tweet, but he’s kind of glad it’s happening anyway.

He likes some of the selfies that are directly in response to him and then turns his phone off for the evening.

But he keeps thinking about it, through the days that follow. Turning the words over in his head, holding them against his body to see if they fit.

On Thursday, Bev and Ben show up at eight on the dot, bearing a large pizza even though Richie _told_ them dinner was on him. “Assholes,” he says, as Bev tucks her head under his chin for a hug. “Ambushing me with food in my own home.”

“You truly suffer so much,” Ben says, rolling his eyes. Richie hugs him too, because he’s decided that he likes hugging his friends, and he’s been doing so a lot lately. Other than with Eddie. That’s different. Whatever!

“I have three movie options for you,” he says, leading the way into his little living room. “You’re going to hate all of them.”

“I feel so welcomed,” Bev says. She’s already rummaging through one of his cupboards for a water glass.

Richie sets the pizza on the coffee table and crosses his arms. “I would have offered you a drink if you had waited ten seconds, you homewrecker.”

“Excuse me, _how_ am I a homewrecker?”

“You left your shoes in the middle of the goddamn hallway! You’re wrecking my home! Ben, let me take your coat.”

“That’s all right, Rich,” Ben says, backing away. Richie follows him.

“No, I gotta. Miss Marsh here thinks I’m a bad host, I have to prove her wrong.”

 _Proving her wrong_ involves a five-minute chase-slash-wrestling-match around his living room that ends only when Ben puts Richie in a headlock and Beverly pins his ankles down. “Let me host!” Richie keeps yelling. He’s pretty sure his neighbors hate his guts. “Let me host you!”

“Our pizza is going to get cold,” Beverly sighs. Her red hair is a mess across her face. “Richie, if we let you up, will you stop trying to tear Ben’s clothes off? That’s my job.”

“Hey!” Ben yelps, and Richie starts laughing so hard that it doesn’t matter when they release him, he’s incapacitated. Ben puts his jean jacket in the hall closet while Richie gives Bev a hugely satisfying high-five.

They’re not in the city a lot—Ben splits his time between visiting Bev and doing his own shit, back home in Nebraska. Beverly still lives in the city, but she spends a lot of time visiting Ben. Very devotional. They get to learn how to be people together. And then they share all that goodness with Richie whenever they can, on nights like this when they order takeout and watch action movies.

Speaking of which. “Okay, so I have a few modern classics picked out for us tonight,” Richie says, putting on a Voice he stole from an absolutely entrancing Jeopardy contestant a few years ago. The guy had sounded like a Kentucky auctioneer mixed with a member of the British royal family. “First up and comin’ in hot is _The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,_ even though I hate to threaten Ben’s jawline with any reminders of the existence of Henry Cavill.”

“I watched that too recently,” Bev admits with a tilted smile. “What’s up next?”

Richie gives her an elaborate bow. “Behind door number two is everyone’s favorite love story involving train derailment and fridged mothers, _Super 8._ This movie has everything: absolutely useless white Rubix cubes, a dubiously Midwestern setting, zombies, aliens…”

Richie actually loves _Super 8,_ because it makes him think of the Losers, even if he finds the end cheesy enough to melt in a fondue pot. Something about a crew of kids facing something Big and Scary—it has thematic relevance, okay?

But Ben doesn’t look convinced. “Zombies _and_ aliens?”

“Not actually,” Richie says, but he can’t exactly say more without spoiling it, can he? “Option three is just watching _Jupiter Ascending_ for the fifth time.”

“I mean…” Bev says, fighting a smile. “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”

Richie shakes his head as he pops the DVD in. “I don’t even know why I bother renting other movies,” he laments. “I should know the score by now.”

“Just make Eddie watch the others with you,” Bev says, handing him the pizza box as he crashes on the couch next to her. “He probably needs the movie education, don’t you think?”

Richie snorts. “I’ll say. I bet the esteemed Mrs. Kaspbrak probably barred anything from the house that wasn’t based on a Nicholas Sparks novel.” Then he winces. He shouldn’t take shots at Eddie’s wife. Ex-wife. Ex-wife-in-progress. 

He should probably check in with Eddie soon, actually. See how the whole divorce thing is going.

He tried, in the beginning, to get Eddie to join movie nights. Never really worked. _I can’t right now, Rich,_ Eddie would always say over the phone, and he did sound truly regretful, but the answer never changed. _I have to take care of things here first._

Sometimes they grab coffee, and that’s gotta be enough. Richie’s not waiting for anything else. He mostly decided to stay in the city to support Eddie and Bev through their respective divorces, and then found the former determined to go it alone and the latter sufficiently supported by Benjamin “Haystack” Hanscom. 

But Richie hasn’t gone back to Chicago yet. His apartment there is nicer, maybe, but he likes New York, and going back would mean he’s out of self-imposed exile and has to start seriously thinking about getting back to work. No fucking thanks!

He layers two slices of pizza on top of each other and eats them at the same time. Efficiency. Beverly steals a trio of beers from his fridge, and Richie goes back in to fetch a second round somewhere around the part with the bees.

He and Bev discover, to their delight, that Ben can recite almost every line of the movie by heart. “We’ve seen it enough fucking times,” Ben says, but he’s grinning. Richie just cackles.

“I’ll never stopped being obsessed with the costumes in this,” Beverly says later, staring with rapt attention as one of the creepy alien characters drifts about in a sparkling black robe, chest bared. “Richie, you should do a set based off this movie. Let me design your outfit.”

“That would tend more towards the realm of drag than stand-up,” Richie says, “and I haven’t done that since college.” He can sense their surprise, but he just reaches for the last slice of pizza. “Feel free to make me something tits-out like this, though. I could rock it.”

Maybe the gender fuckery goes back further than he thought. Richie watches the rest of the movie with his head on Beverly’s shoulder, mirroring Ben on her other side. He thinks about how much fun he had performing in drag when he was in his twenties, even though he only did it a handful of times.

He doesn’t think he wants to wear dresses in his everyday life. He’d probably just look stupid, to be honest; these days his shoulders are much too wide for such a thing. There’s nothing about the way he looks that he feels like changing. Just, like, the way he feels. Maybe.

 _Rub some fucking dirt in it, Tozier,_ he thinks to himself. _It’s not that big a deal._

“I love dogs, I’ve always loved dogs,” Ben gasps, in perfect unison with the clusterfuck happening onscreen. Richie chortles and puts his feet up on the coffee table. He hollers along with Bev, trying to say the words along with the characters like Ben can, though mostly they fuck it up. 

“I really should get into costume design,” Bev muses. “Richie, you’re in movies, right?”

He snorts. “Bit parts in stoner comedies. Not many chances for designing, like, intergalactic wedding dresses in any of that shit.”

She hums. “Next time you’re in a movie. Give someone my name. I’m curious.”

“I will,” he says, even though he hasn’t been answering most (any) of Steve’s emails, and most (all) of his career is probably down the drain by now. That’s fine. He keeps telling himself it’s fine.

The movie draws to its overly dramatic finish. Ben picks up the beer cans and Richie slouches into the bathroom to piss. He avoids looking at himself in the mirror while he washes his hands.

When he steps back into the hallway, can hear his friends talking in the kitchen. Bev’s voice first: “Does he even have a recycling can?”

And Ben’s measured response: “He has to. After that rant we all sat through from Eddie?” Richie allows himself a moment to lean against the wall and just listen. To the names. And the pronouns. Testing how they feel, like running his tongue over a tender spot in his mouth.

“Yeah, but since when does he do anything that Eddie tells him to?”

“You’d be surprised,” Ben says. “I think Eddie gets under Richie’s skin more than he likes to admit.”

Bev’s tone turns sly, teasing. “I know that look. What are you cooking up, sweetheart?”

“Nothing at all,” Ben returns, and Richie stays still for one moment while his friends kiss in his kitchen, because he loves them, and he likes to know that they love each other.

Then he barrels in. “I need hot sauce, STAT,” he announces, wedging his bodies between theirs as obnoxiously as possible to get to the cupboard. 

Beverly laughs and grabs at his arm for balance. “What on earth for?”

“To burn my eyes out, after that little display—”

“Oh, fuck off, you can handle two adults kissing—”

“Really disrespectful to be conducting trysts in my kitchen, Ben, I expected better of you—”

“You think Ben has an exhibition kink? _Ben?”_

Richie laughs, long and loud. “Beverly, stop, he’s red as a tomato,” he cackles. Beverly gives Ben a loud kiss on each cheek, and Richie shrieks in further mock-disgust.

The apartment is quiet once they’re gone, but Richie smiles and hums as he gets ready for bed. Little snippets of the _Jupiter Ascending_ score as he brushes his teeth and splashes water on his face, some old country song as he turns out the lights. At night his apartment is lit with strange squares of white and orange, courtesy of the streetlights shining up at sharp angles through his windows. Richie gets himself a glass of water and pads back to his room, still humming.

Then he lays back in bed. And he thinks about the conversation he overheard. And he whispers bits of it aloud—talking about himself in the third person is clumsy. The only Voices he can’t do are those of his friends. He knows them too well, is too aware of the ways he can’t quite catch their warmth and timbre. 

His pillow is too hot. He flips it over and presses his cheek to the cool side.

So here’s the thing. Richie doesn’t think he has any issue with everyone calling him _him_ for the rest of his life. But _they_ sounds kind of cool, maybe. It feels nice. He keeps picturing a calm stretch of water, and he isn’t exactly sure why, but it’s peaceful. 

He holds the image in his head when he falls asleep. 

The preoccupation stays humming in the back of his mind all through the next day. A small, shameful little wondering. At one point he sits and stares at the hair on his forearms and feels ridiculous for thinking that he could be anything but a man. But then, a moment later, he feels even more ridiculous. Is that what a gender is built on? The state of his forearms? Surely not.

He can’t get over the embarrassed certainty that he’s way too old to be worrying about this shit. Wasn’t one crisis enough, Tozier? He did the gay thing already. When he was a _teenager._ Isn’t it a little late to be adding on more asterisks to his sense of self?

He grumbles to himself as he collapses onto the couch. He didn’t _have_ any of these words when he was a teenager.

A beam of sunlight is making its slow way across the wall of his living room. Richie takes a deep breath in and out and tries to imagine what he would say if he was talking to a therapist.

He does that sometimes. Therapy. And it never really sticks, but sometimes just remembering the pattern of question and answer is helpful. What would he say, if he had to explain himself? _I almost died and all of my friends almost died and the man I love very definitely almost died in particular, and now I’m just so tired._ Tired of what, Richie? _Not admitting what I want._ What do you want?

He wanted to come out, so he did. He wanted to fire his writers, so he did. He wanted to stay in New York, at least for a little while, and here he is. He feels like the burly main character of an action movie, shouting _What’s next? What fresh hell do you have for me next?_ after dismembering a whole, like, zombie horde. What part of his life can he break open now?

But he might be at his limit. Can’t defeat the boss battle. There’s the question of his identity, which he can barely look at. And then there’s the question of Eddie, which is too painful to consider even out of the corner of his eye. Some superhero he is, standing with his eyes closed! 

The sunlight has smeared itself all the way over to the far end of the wall by the time he looks up again. One brilliant line of orange. Through the window, sunset, cut through with skyscrapers.

He makes dinner. Bill calls, and spoils the ending of the book he’s working on, despite Richie’s attempts to stop him. And the he watches _Super 8_ alone and spends most of it scrolling social media, because focusing on one thing at a time has never really been his forte.

And that’s how his whole weekend passes, and it’s fine. It’s all fine.

When Richie gets out of bed on Monday, they spend a long time looking at their face in the mirror. Then he gets on with his day.

Much as he hates to admit it, it’s probably time to listen seriously to Steve about his reentry into the comedy circuit. He can’t be tempted back out to Chicago quite yet—even though Steve curses him out every time they have a video conference, because Steve is absolute shit with technology—but he can’t just wallow and chew through his savings forever. 

So he groans and sighs and brings some snacks out to the coffee table, where he sets up with his laptop for most of the afternoon to comb through emails. Several offers and ideas are old enough know to put a sour taste in his stomach when he looks at them, but he presses _delete_ and moves on. There a few fishhooks out attached to movies, and he flags those, remembering Bev’s probing questions. He fires an email off to Steve about a comedy club whose good graces he has not exhausted, and then has to spend an hour on the phone with Steve going over everything that could have been said in a return email. Whatever! It’s nice to feel productive, even if the steps are small.

He’s just started thinking about dinner when someone knocks on his door.

For a second, Richie thinks that his subliminal desire for pizza has become strong enough to summon one straight to him. But that doesn’t make any sense. He tries to shake himself out of the haze of looking at a screen for several hours as he gets up and pulls open the door. People don’t usually drop in on him out of the blue; the neighborhood is a quiet one, and to gain entry to Richie’s building one would have to know the code to the door.

Richie beams when he sees who’s on the other side, and barely manages to say, “Hey, man, what’s shaking?” before he’s being kissed within an inch of his life. 

It takes a minute for his body to come online and catch up, actually, because one second he’s opening his door and the next second he has an armful of Eddie Kaspbrak, pressing up against him and going after the line of Richie’s mouth with his tongue.

And Richie lets him. He closes the door and pushes Eddie up against it, even as his brain starts chanting a relentless string of profanities, even as he wonders what in the goddamn hell is going on right now.

Which is exactly what he asks, when Eddie gives him a moment to catch his breath. “What in the goddamn hell is going on right now?”

Eddie’s face is very pink. He’s still being pinned against the door. “Hi, Rich,” he says quietly, and Richie starts to laugh.

“Why _hello,_ Edward.” He leans into the comfort of a Voice, some droll socialite, as though they’re two WASPs at a party. _“Such_ a pleasure to see you, I was _so_ wondering if you’d be able to drop by.” He noses at Eddie’s temple, feeling stupid and giddy. Eddie kissed him! Eddie kissed them!! He wants to rip open the neck of his shirt and start hollering like an animal.

“I came by to, uh, tell you my divorce was finalized,” Eddie says. His voice is smaller than usual. _Oh shit._ Richie pulls back a little to get a good look at him. Eddie’s expression is tense and determined. “It’s done. I’m not married anymore.”

Richie doesn’t know how to have this conversation with his mouth still buzzing from being kissed. “Congratulations? Or, I’m sorry? I don’t know which one is more appropriate.” Speaking of which, he should probably get his hands off Eddie’s hipbones. He moves back a step.

Eddie moves forward a step, chasing him. “Didn’t come here for appropriateness,” he says, still quiet. “I just…wanted to see you.” He’s in a blue suit. It looks incredible on him.

This situation feels like it calls for more delicacy than Richie is capable of. He’s never met a sensitive moment that he didn’t break in his large, clumsy hands. “Do you want, like, some water or something?”

And he gets a weird look for that, which he maybe deserves, but then Eddie says, “Yeah, sure. Water would be great.” And they go to the kitchen. Richie gets them both a glass, because he desperately wants something to do with his hands.

“So,” he says, once they’ve both had a chance to take a sip. “What’s up?”

Eddie rolls his eyes so hard it looks like they’ll come out of his skull. “Not much, Rich, how about you?”

“Oh, same old,” Richie says, grinning at him. “Hey, do you want to guess how many unread emails I’ve amassed since you last saw me?”

 _“No,”_ Eddie says, “I do _not,_ I’m stressed enough as it is.”

“Why are you stressed?”

Eddie’s hair is a little fucked up and it’s so charming Richie could die. “Why the fuck do you think?” he asks, rolling his eyes again.

Richie shrugs. “I mean, like, the divorce looms large—”

“Fuck.” Eddie takes a huge gulp of water, like he needs to fortify himself.

“But it’s done, right? You’re a free man. A free agent.” Able and willing to throw himself at whoever he wants, kiss whoever he wants. Richie keeps the smile on his face, even though his insides are rioting. The way French people riot, throwing couches through the windows of the President’s mansion and stuff. Really intense shit. Act two of _Les Mis_ up in his digestive tract. 

Eddie is oblivious to all of this. He gives a short laugh. “I mean. Free in what sense?”

“Uh.” Why is _Richie_ the one he came to? Richie is horribly underqualified. “In every sense, I guess. You can do whatever you want now.”

“Yeah. I can.” And he fixes his dark eyes on Richie and doesn’t look away.

Richie fidgets. All he ever wants is Eddie’s attention; once he gets it, he never knows how to handle it. “What are you staring at me for?”

“Don’t want to look at anything else,” Eddie says, smooth, and Richie can’t help but laugh.

“Fuck you,” he says, “fuck you talking like you’re trying to pick me up in a bar, like we’re fucking twenty, what is that—”

“Oh, like you’re any better, thanks for the _water.”_ His tone is scathing.

“The fuck’s that supposed to mean? You’re always on my ass about drinking enough water.”

“Yeah, but not when I’m in the middle of trying to—you know—”

“Trying to what?”

“Do this!” Eddie yells.

And Richie yells back, just as loud, “Do _what?”_

“Think about it for two goddamn seconds, Rich, please,” Eddie snaps. “I got divorced and I came here to kiss you.” Oh. So they _are_ going to talk about it. “What do you think that means?”

“That you’re out of your goddamn mind,” Richie says pleasantly, because—

Because. He’s got too strong a sense of self-preservation to start hoping for any other reasons.

“If I’m crazy, it’s your fault,” Eddie says. “I am genuinely contemplating homicide right now, just so you know.”

“Mm, talk dirty to me.”

“I’m _trying,”_ Eddie all but shouts, and that makes Richie burst into laughter.

“You’re going to need to try harder,” he manages to say, “because that is not at _all_ what I’m getting out of this conversation.”

“What are you getting, then?”

A complex about Eddie yelling and half a boner, honestly. “You got divorced and decided to come play tonsil hockey with the only gay guy you know.”

Eddie’s whole face is red and his eyebrows look spectacularly angry. “One, never fucking call it that again, do you hear me? And _two,_ that is _not_ what happened.”

“That’s exactly what happened,” Richie tries to say, but Eddie talks right over him.

“I got _divorced_ and I decided to come kiss the guy that I left my wife for.”

Richie drops his water glass. _“WHAT?”_ It hits the ground and by some miracle doesn’t shatter, but now his feet are soaking wet and Eddie jumps, looking spooked. 

“What!” Eddie yells. “I thought we were on the same page about that!”

“We are not even remotely on the same goddamn page!” Richie yells back. “What the fuck! I thought you were leaving Myra because she’s basically a mini-mom!”

“I mean yes, that too, but—Jesus, Rich, I thought I was being so transparent—”

Richie buries his face in his hands. “You never said anything, you absolute fuckwaffle. How the _fuck_ was I supposed to know?”

“You were so _supportive—”_

“Is it completely outside the realm of possibility that I genuinely wanted what was best for you, man?”

“Then, did I,” Eddie says, and then swallows, like he can’t bear to speak. His face has gone awfully pale. “Did I, like, misread a ton of things then? Because I can just. Go? And we don’t have to talk about—”

“Wait, hold the fuck up,” Richie says. “I did kiss you back, did you miss that part? Do we need to revisit that?”

“I basically jumped you.”

“Yeah, and it was the best thirty seconds of my life.”

Some color comes back to Eddie’s cheeks. “Yeah?”

Richie nods solemnly. “Oh yeah.”

They have to stand with that pronouncement for a moment. Eddie is breathing kind of hard. “So can you, like, tell me where you are with all of this, then?”

“I’m in my kitchen,” Richie says, because he will never stop being a little shit.

Eddie grinds his teeth, so hard it looks like it hurts. “You know what I fucking mean.”

“I’m not actually sure that I do?” Richie says. He’s only like 70% sure that he’s not dreaming. “Do you want a full clinical report on my emotional state? Because thus far my brain has defied all scientific categorization, so—” 

“No, actually,” Eddie says. “I want you to tell me what you _want.”_

Oh. Fuck. “I’m really not good at that,” Richie admits.

“Trust me, I fucking know.” Eddie is still breathing hard, and it’s _really_ sexy, and Richie might die if he doesn’t kiss him again soon. “Tell me one thing.”

“One thing I want?”

“Yes.”

His mouth still moves faster than his brain _or_ his dick. “World peace.”

“I’m going to castrate you with a spoon.”

Richie grins at him. “I feel like that would complicate what’s going on here, don’t you think?”

“Nothing is _going on_ until you _tell me—”_

“I want to blow you,” Richie interrupts. Eddie gapes at him, and Richie just smiles cheerily. “I’ve wanted to for ages. I’m good at it, too. I’ll take it so well.” He draws the words out, lascivious, and tops them off with a wink. “Happy?”

Eddie’s pupils are huge. Like a cat when it sees something interesting. “You asshole,” he says. “For _ages?_ Why didn’t you _say_ anything?”

“Why didn’t I tell you that I wanted to suck your dick? Uh, because you were _married?”_

Eddie stalks forward a few steps, looking for all the world like he wants to wring Richie’s neck. “I was getting divorced!”

Richie crosses his arms. “That almost made it worse, man.”

“It would have made it better for me!”

“What?” Richie feels like he’s run a mile. “Why?”

He and Eddie are close now, in each other’s faces. Eddie licks his lips, fast, just a slip of tongue. “Because,” he says, “I would have had something to look forward to.”

Richie blinks at him. “It’s a blowjob, not a holiday.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie snaps, and he shoves Richie back a step with one hand on his chest. “You in _general,_ jackass. Don’t play dumb.”

Richie is smiling again and he can’t make himself stop. “Please,” he says. “Assume I’m very dumb. Spell it out for me in little words.”

The hand on his chest hasn’t moved. Eddie looks at him for a long moment and just breathes. Then he says, “You’re who I want to come home to.”

And doesn’t that just take Richie out at the knees. “Fuck, man,” he says, slumping back against the wall. “Is this romance? Am I being romanced? I can’t say anything half as smooth as that.”

“I figured,” Eddie huffs, “since I came here to talk about feelings and you decided to talk about sucking me off.” The words, from his mouth, are obscene. Richie is entranced. 

“See, you say _talk about feelings,_ but that wasn’t quite the message I got from you sticking your tongue down my throat.”

Eddie swallows. “I got sidetracked.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I was happy to see you.”

Richie is beaming again. He tucks two fingers into the waistband of Eddie’s slacks and pulls him in gently, murmuring, “Come here, you.” Their second kiss is softer. Fonder. Richie stays slouched against the wall so Eddie can reach his mouth without going on tiptoe.

Their first kiss was a fire-bright flickering thing. This one is warm as melting sugar. Richie kisses Eddie’s thin top lip, touches his tongue to the soft skin just inside Eddie’s bottom lip. Eddie makes a wounded little noise and puts his hand in Richie’s hair. Their hips press together, soft as an accident and then with more intention. “I’m still holding this, fucking, water glass,” Eddie mumbles, and presses his face into Richie’s jaw. “Rich. God, Richie.”

“You gotta tell me if you’re serious,” Richie says. He wants to bite Eddie all over, on his knife scar, on his collarbone, on the curve of his ear. “No take-backs, okay? I can’t—If you try to take it back, I won’t—”

“Never,” Eddie says, and he ducks away for one horrible moment, just to finally set his cup on the counter. He comes right back with both hands free and eager to frame Richie’s face. “I’m so fucking serious.”

“Cool,” Richie chokes, and Eddie kisses him again, harder. 

“Touch me, you asshole,” he pants, and Richie’s own hands _finally_ get with the program. He gets them both up the back of Eddie’s crisp white shirt, clutching at the muscles of his shoulders, the smooth skin over his ribs. 

“You little gym rat,” Richie mutters, pleased, into the corner of Eddie’s mouth. 

Eddie nips at him. “Like you can talk—your fucking shoulders—”

This is news to Richie. “Oh yeah? You like them?”

_“Of course I fucking like them, have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying?”_

And Richie laughs, long and loud, and Eddie digs his fingers into his ribs, which only makes him laugh longer, and when he finally catches his breath he says, “I want to fuck you so bad I could cry.” His socks are still wet. He really doesn’t care.

“Thank god,” Eddie says. “Do it, coward.”

*

Later, with Eddie curled up and snuffling in his sleep on the other side of the bed, it occurs to Richie that this might be the happiest they’ve ever felt.


	2. your shirt is soft

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: richie jokes about addiction, infidelity, being committed, vomiting, virgin sacrifices, and bronies. eddie threatens murder. steve is not very woke. enjoy!

As a teenager, Richie used to stare helplessly at the inside of Eddie’s wrist, the angle of his knee, trying hard to look anywhere else. Bruce Springsteen in his ear all through the summer, singing _I’ve got a bad desire._ It comes to him still, when he watches Eddie towel dry his hair or get undressed at the end of a long day. _Oh, I’m on fire._

He just didn’t think he would ever get to have this. Sometimes a hot burst of something—call it fear, call it shame—still prickles over Richie’s skin when he thinks too hard about loving Eddie.

He isn’t sure about how or when to tell their friends, but Eddie takes care of that with all his characteristic candor. One week after the divorce is finalized, Richie wakes up to find 126 new massages in the Losers group chat. When he scrolls back through them, they turn out to mostly be in response to a succinct text from Eddie: _Just so you all know, I’m dating Richie._ It’s timestamped 6:04am and has five “!!” reactions. Richie reads through all of the comments from his friends and laughs himself silly at the mixture of utter surprise (Bill) and smug celebration (Beverly). 

That’s a good morning.

But.

None of helps with Richie’s continual struggle to get back to work. Steve is _constantly_ on his ass about it, and Richie really fucking wishes he could just sit down and commit to being a person, but some heavy dread always stays his hands. It’s easy to not work when it’s late and he’s sad. It’s even easier to not work when Eddie comes over to lay around for an afternoon in Richie’s sunny bedroom. Richie loves to see the small sparks of red and gold that show up in Eddie’s dark brown hair when he lies directly in the light. 

He’s soft when he first wakes up from a nap. Less inclined to snap, more likely to lean into Richie for a kiss.

And none of it helps with The Gender Debacle, which spins in the back of Richie’s head at all times like a skipping record. Something about his skin doesn’t fit anymore, and he doesn’t think it has for a while—since before Derry 2.0, even. He can’t really put a pin in a start date, but he knows it’s been buzzing around him for some time. That alone should be proof that it’s real.

But it’s complicated.

For one thing, Richie has absolutely no claims to androgyny and doesn’t particularly want to. And he knows, he _knows_ that’s not a fucking requirement, but sometimes he still feels ridiculous when he looks at his face, covered in stubble, or regards his large hands and square knuckles. 

For another thing, there’s Eddie. Eddie’s gay. (Eddie’s gay!!) As in, interested in men. If Richie doesn’t quite count as _men_ anymore, what does that mean?

Not that it has stopped Eddie thus far. He stays at Richie’s basically every other night now, watching shitty movies _(Jupiter Ascending_ makes him almost apoplectic with rage) and judging the contents of Richie’s fridge. And more often than not they fall into bed together, and it’s good every single time.

“You’re so good, Rich, god, that feels so good,” Eddie will say, with his head thrown back, Richie’s hands all over his thighs. Richie is kind of obsessed with fucking him, obsessed with the way that Eddie loves it, obsessed with the way Eddie pulls a little too hard on his hair.

Fuck, Richie doesn’t ever want to give it up. 

But the record keeps spinning.

He starts narrating his own actions, first in his head but then also out loud. “He’s going up the stairs,” he’ll say, and then halfway up test out _“They’re_ going up the stairs,” and try to decide which one sounds better.

Problem is, they both sound fine.

He almost does it in front of Eddie once, which is so terrifying and hilarious that it nearly makes him fall out of bed. It’s early morning on a Saturday, and he opens his eyes to see Eddie curled up with his head against Richie’s shoulder, and Richie opens his mouth to say “They’re waking up in bed with Eddie.” But he stops himself at the last second and starts laughing instead, which does result in Eddie waking up and hitting him with a pillow.

“What—the—fuck?” Eddie snaps, punctuating each word with another blow from the pillow. Richie keeps laughing, helpless and wired and completely unable to explain.

“What, you don’t appreciate my wake-up call?” He wrestles the weapon away from Eddie, and then has to deal with Eddie trying to pin his wrists down. Richie fights back; while he certainly doesn’t hit the gym as often as Eddie, he still is the bigger of the two. 

“Do you know how creepy it is to wake up to someone _laughing?”_ Eddie pants as they grapple with each other. “I thought I was about to die!”

“The sound of my laughter should be filling you with joy!” Richie says. Eddie twists out of his grip and gets one more good hit in with a pillow, and then they collapse back on the mattress, grinning at each other. Eddie looks good with his hair sleep-tousled and a smile on his face. There’s a light in his eyes these days that Richie never saw in the first days after Derry. But it shines out of him now.

Even as he rolls over to look at the clock and grumbles, “This was my one day to sleep in, Rich.”

“I was workshopping jokes,” Richie invents, slipping their fingers under Eddie’s t-shirt. “Thought of something really funny, that’s all.”

Eddie’s expression turns languid and pleased. “Oh yeah?” he asks. “Been writing lately?”

Uh. “A little.” Hardly at all. “Nothing concrete yet.”

Eddie blinks those dark eyes of his and tips his head to one side. “Well, tell me the joke.”

“What joke?”

“The one that woke me up, numbnuts. If I have to be conscious before nine on a weekend I’d like to know why.”

Richie pushes their hands further up Eddie’s chest, feeling soft skin and scar tissue. Eddie lets them. “Maybe I had other reasons for waking you up,” Richie says, pitching his voice low and wiggling his eyebrows.

He loses all his bravado when Eddie cups him through his boxers, a barely teasing pressure. “It’s so I can make us breakfast, right?” Eddie asks calmly. 

Richie huffs out a laugh. His eyes slip closed as Eddie’s hand starts to move. “I don’t think I trust you with pancake batter yet. Actually—”

“If you make a disgusting batter joke I _will_ get out of bed this instant,” Eddie threatens, but he undercuts the threat by sticking his hand in Richie’s boxers.

Richie sighs and presses closer. “Can’t have that, can we,” he says. God. Fuck. Eddie’s _hands._

“Tell me the joke,” Eddie murmurs, right against Richie’s ear. 

“Hm?”

“The joke,” Eddie insists. “I want to hear it.”

Richie presses his grin into Eddie’s neck. His hips move in lazy circles, pushing into the grip Eddie has on him. “Not sure I want to remind you how much I’ve fucked your mother while you’re actively jacking me off, sweetheart.”

 _“That’s_ what had you laughing so hard?” Eddie makes an unimpressed noise. 

“You’re the one who has me so hard,” Richie corrects, and gets a bite on the shoulder for his trouble.

But the crisis is averted. In fact, Richie can’t even remember what the crisis was anymore. How can they think of anything other than the press of Eddie’s teeth on their skin, the sharp sound of his breathing, the wonderful maddening motion of his hands?

Richie ends up being the one to make the blueberry pancakes. Eddie tries them with syrup for the first time in his life, and then proceeds to drown the rest of his food in it. “Fuck you,” he says, when Richie keeps laughing at him. 

“I should have remembered your sweet tooth,” Richie says. “Do you get jittery if you go too long without sugar? I bet you sneak into the bathroom at work and line up gum drops on the edge of the sink. Or are you, like, snorting pixy stix after sex?”

“I feel like you would have noticed by now if I was mainlining Halloween candy every time we fuck,” Eddie snarks back. 

“Not necessarily. I come my brains out when I’m with you.”

Eddie swipes syrup off of Richie’s top lip with his thumb. “You say the sweetest things,” he says dryly.

God, it’s good.

*

Winter in New York churns on. Steve tries to lure Richie back to Chicago with everything short of actual blackmail, but like hell is Richie leaving now. He has Eddie Kaspbrak in his apartment on a regular basis; why the fuck would he give that up?

“I can’t do my best work for you if you’re all the way over there,” Steve complains, on one of their many video calls.

Richie rolls his eyes. “And I keep telling you, you don’t need to do your best work for me right now. I’m on vacation. Bitch.”

“It’s been seven months. You’re a hot commodity, Rich, but you won’t be forever. Not even with your little teases at those open-mic nights.”

“Maybe I’m trying to get back to my roots.”

“Why would you? I can guarantee they don’t pay as well.”

“If this is solely about the money then I would listen to you,” Richie says, and then cuts off Steve’s response by saying, “Look, I gotta go. I’m having a friend over for dinner.” And then he closes his laptop without a goodbye and yells into a couch cushion for a minute.

He wasn’t lying about dinner. Eddie shows up a half-hour later, still in his work clothes and red-faced from the cold. “Can I borrow a t-shirt?” he asks as he hangs up his coat and a garment bag. “I don’t want to fuck up this suit.”

“Take anything,” Richie says, and then wanders down the hallway to the bedroom so they can watch Eddie change. Eddie shoots them a grin when he notices.

“You look worked up,” he says. “Steve troubles?” He knows the score by now.

“He’s just being a brat about getting me back to Chicago,” Richie says. “And I know he’s right but I also don’t want to go.”

“You could split time between here and there,” Eddie says reasonably, heading to the kitchen so they can start dinner. “I’m still fucking playing catch-up from my medical leave, but I usually have a few business trips a year myself.”

Richie shoots him a smoldering look. “I’m suddenly filled with aspirations to join the mile-high club.”

“Ew. Absolutely fucking not.”

“Aw, we’re absolutely not fucking?”

“Not in an airplane bathroom, asshole.”

“Eddie, darling, you wouldn’t even have to get out of your seat.” And then Richie laughs and laughs, trying to avoid getting swatted with a wooden spoon while Eddie explains why that’s _worse._

They spend most of their evenings together at Richie’s place, cooking dinner or getting takeout. Eddie’s apartment is a shoebox, little more than an escape hatch from his marriage, but one of which he’s aggressively fond. “I’m not going to break my lease,” he says primly, after a few loud observations from Richie about how rarely he sleeps there anymore. “It’s mine and I like having something that’s mine.”

“Technically it’s your landlord’s,” Richie says, glancing over from their spot in front of the stove.

Eddie is cutting up broccoli florets with an unimpressed frown. Richie’s got all sorts of sauces and meats down pat but he can’t be fucked to cook a vegetable, so that’s Eddie’s domain. “And, jackass? You rent this place.”

“Yeah, but I own my place in Chicago.”

“So go stay in Chicago, then!”

“And be banishèd from my dear Edward’s heart? Never.”

“I’m not moving in with you,” Eddie says, and Richie snorts.

“Presumptuous of you, since I haven’t even asked.”

“You were implying it,” Eddie grumbles. “I can’t just take you and use you to fill up the gaps in my life where Myra used to be.”

“What if I want to fill up your gaps?” Richie asks, in a low and sultry Voice. He gets up close behind Eddie, sliding his arms under Eddie’s arms so he can reach the salt shaker on the counter.

Eddie doesn’t even twitch. “It matters to me,” he says. “So, no. I’m not moving in with you yet.”

 _Yet._ What a beautiful word. Richie grins, and bites his grin into the back of Eddie’s neck. “I’ll make an honest man out of you someday,” he says, a low promise.

“Fuck you if you think I’m going through the whole marriage ordeal again,” Eddie says, but when he turns his head for a kiss his eyes are fond. “Don’t burn the fucking chicken.”

“I’m _not.”_ Richie scoots back to the stovetop, just to make sure.

“I’ve eaten overcooked chicken my entire life. I’m drawing a line in the sand.”

“Eddie, darling, I know how to cook.” Richie glances over their shoulder, just to make sure they don’t miss the flush on the back of Eddie’s neck at the nickname.

Eddie hunches his shoulders up, like he knows what Richie’s doing. “Show-off.”

“You’re getting there. Gonna be a gourmet before you know it. Learn how to bone a duck just like Julia Child.”

And that makes Eddie laugh, even as he brings over the broccoli to add to their stir fry. “Fuck you, you just want to make a boning joke, don’t even—”

“I’m proud of you, I really am, soon you’ll be boning all sorts of things in the kitchen—”

“Yeah, and you won’t be one of them if you let this chicken burn.”

“It’s not going to burn!”

Broccoli, onions, sauce, more oil. Eddie fusses over a pot of rice, even though Richie keeps telling him to just trust it. They have a bottle of wine they haven’t opened yet, but they might save it for another night. Eddie has work in the morning, after all. He brought over an extra button-down and everything, which is how Richie knows he’s staying the night.

“For what it’s worth,” Richie says. “You’re always welcome here, even if I do have to pop back to Chicago sometime soon. _And,”_ he adds, because he can tell Eddie wants to interrupt, “I think it’s cool you’ve got your own bachelor pad. So like. Kudos for that.”

“I don’t think I’m a bachelor by any definition of the word,” Eddie mutters. “I’ve been married and I’m not single.” The timer goes off. Eddie whips the lid off the pot and smiles down at the perfect bed of rice. “Look at that.”

“Told you so.”

“Fuck off.” They start loading up their plates. “Thank you,” Eddie adds, unexpectedly. He doesn’t look at Richie. “Sometimes I worry that I’m still being an asshole. But… I want this. So I’m doing it.”

“Hell yeah, dude,” Richie says. “You know I’m all for it.”

“I do know.” Eddie finally turns to him. His mouth is one stern line. “The divorce would have needed to happen even if you weren’t in the picture. But,” and here he gives a small laugh, _“fuck,_ it’s been a hell of a lot better with you around.”

“I barely saw you while it was happening,” Richie teases. “Think of all those missed opportunities for me to make it _even better.”_

“You still helped,” Eddie says, once more refusing to fall prey to innuendo. “Had your voice in my head all the time.”

That’s a new bit of information. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Back in Derry you said I was brave,” Eddie says. His dark eyes keep darting away from Richie’s face and then back again. “You talk a lot of bullshit, but I also think you tell the truth. So I kept repeating it to myself. Whenever I needed it.”

“I’m your _mantra?”_ Richie grins so that he won’t bawl. “Spaghetti, I’m fucking honored. I’ve been thinking about branching out into self-help books, do you think I—”

“I once watched you use a tennis racket to strain pasta because you didn’t know where your mother kept the colander,” Eddie cuts in dryly. “I don’t think the masses are ready for your ‘help.’”

“I’m a fucking innovator,” Richie says, and then he sidles up close again to give Eddie a kiss on the temple. He never was much good with out-loud sincerity, so he hopes the soft press of his mouth gets the message across. _You are brave, you’re so brave, I hold you in my heart always._

Eddie hums and tips his chin up. Message received. They spend the evening like that, eating the stir-fry standing up in the kitchen. Eddie sits on the counter and balances his plate on his knees, talks with his mouth full because he can’t go thirty seconds without interrupting Richie mid-sentence, laughs so hard at his own stupid joke that he bangs his head on the cupboard behind him.

And he does sleep over, and Richie gets to watch him suit up for work in the morning and kiss him goodbye. 

Everything is perfect. Almost.

*

It stays on Richie’s mind for a week. The bravery thing. Because fuck, yeah, they think Eddie is one of the bravest people they’ve ever met. Obviously all of the Losers hold that title in Richie’s heart, but Eddie’s something special. To have terror calmly and constantly packed into his brain from such a young age, and to still be so strong.

It’s not as easy to approach the topic of Richie’s own bravery. As far as he’s concerned, there’s not enough material worth going over. Sure, he stood up to the clown, but that was pure adrenaline and concern for his friends. Yeah, he’s somewhat open about being gay now, but since when has cracking jokes ever been a type of courage?

The preoccupation works its way into his fledgling writing. Steve finally cajoles him into booking a larger comedy club, something bigger than the guerilla-style ten-minute sets he’s been doing since being in New York, and Richie really wants it to be good. He wants to leave the audience screaming. He wants to _write._

They can’t forget the slow look of pleasure on Eddie’s face when Richie mentioned writing, and the memory returns to them every time they sit down with some paper and a pen. There are false starts upon false starts, but Richie has found that the writing comes much more smoothly if they write _Dear Eddie_ at the top of the page.

 _Dear Eddie, I hate to tell you like this, but I fucked your mom._ The jokes flow from there.

But sometimes the letters are more like journal entries than stand up sets, which is annoying. _Dear Eddie, I don’t really know what people mean when they say gender is a construct but I think I want to take a hacksaw to the whole idea. Dear Eddie, my mom never wanted a son, wouldn’t this be a fun surprise? Maybe I’m born with it. Maybe it’s clown trauma. Dear Eddie, do you like me back, would you want me still?_

He actually rips up that last one. Can’t be leaving shit like that lying around where someone might see it. But there’s a sick feeling in his stomach after he does it, and it feels like cowardice.

It’s late and Richie is alone, because Eddie _does_ still stay at his own apartment sometimes. Which will be Richie’s defense, whenever they are asked about this moment later on. _It was late and I was unsupervised._

They want to feel brave. But not in a way that involves actually telling anyone. _Damn it._ It’s too big a thing to drop on a friend unprompted this late on a Sunday, but Richie will literally vibrate out of their skin if they don’t do _something._

So he gets out his phone. And he opens Twitter. And he navigates to his own profile.

Very carefully, he types out _he/they_ at the end of his bio. For years the only thing it said was _Professional funnyman. Wanted in seven states. Yes my hair does that naturally._

It takes them a long time to work up the courage to press the Save button.

And then nothing changes, of course.

Richie peeks through their fingers for the next five minutes, but there’s no cosmic retribution and certainly no stir on Twitter itself. Which, like, duh. It’s not like anyone gets updated when his bio changes. 

It gets to belong to him alone for a moment. Open bravery with no consequences—fuck, it feels good. Richie grins and drags their hand back through their hair. Then they check the time and scramble out of their seat, because they haven’t had dinner yet and their favorite pizza place stops delivering after eleven. Someday the other shoe is going to drop! But not today, motherfuckers.

They eat ¾ of a large pizza and pass out, enjoying the sleep of the well-contented. 

It takes one day for a fan to notice. _WAS ANYONE GONNA TELL ME RICH TOZIER IS A HE/THEY OR DID I HAVE TO READ THAT IN HIS BIO MYSELF??_

15.2k likes by the time Richie sees it the next afternoon. People are flipping out over a screenshot of his bio, pronouns included, that someone else posts. Other accounts start quote-tweeting his initial question about what nonbinary means and use a lot of side-eye emojis. People say things like _out of left field, what the fuck, never would have guessed, is this a joke???_

Maybe it was naïve to assume that no one would really care. Richie presses their tongue to the inside of their lower teeth and wonders how, exactly, to feel. There’s an expectant edge of nausea in his stomach but he doesn’t think it’s going to overwhelm the pocket of open air in his chest. He was always best in the aftermath. The brave thing was said and it didn’t even take that much bravery. Now there’s nothing to do but cavort in the wreckage. 

_Deciding_ to go to Neibolt had been a hundred times worse than actually ascending the steps. Richie has always been like that. 

They shoot up off the couch like they’ve been electrocuted, suddenly starving and full of energy. The fridge is once more barren, a wasteland, a void, save for one of Eddie’s green smoothies, and Richie is keeping that like a good-luck charm so Eddie will keep coming back. 

Grocery store it is. But probably jeans first. Yeah, that’s a good idea.

It isn’t until Richie is in the store, peering contemplatively over at the sushi counter, that it occurs to them that maybe they should have mentioned the gender thing to Eddie, at least, before dropping it on the internet.

And then, when his phone starts ringing, it occurs to him that he _definitely_ should have mentioned it to Steve.

He pops his headphones in so he doesn’t have to shop one-handed and answers the call with a cheery “Yello?”

“Hey man,” Steve says pleasantly. “What the fuck?” Before Richie can respond, he adds, “Or am I not allowed to call you ‘man’ anymore?”

“What?” Richie shakes his head even though Steve can’t see him. “I don’t care about that. Listen, it’s not a huge deal. It’s just something I’m thinking about.”

“Well it’s as good as announced now, whatever ‘it’ is. A little warning would have been nice.”

“You know how it is with matters of the heart,” Richie says, letting their Voice lilt like a romance heroine. “It just couldn’t wait.”

“The heart? I would have thought your dick would be more relevant. Or have you lost yours?”

“Take a gender studies course, bitch, my dick has nothing to do with this,” Richie says. “I’ll send you the Wikipedia page. How much shit am I in?”

“Apparently I’m supposed to say I’m proud of you,” Steve says dryly. “So I’ll start with that. Wishing you a very happy period of self-discovery. Should I send balloons?”

“Fuck no,” Richie says. “But flowers, yes.”

“One of those corpse ones that smells like death.”

“Keep it in your office, it’ll be an improvement.”

“Fuck off. How do you want to handle this?”

Richie sighs and turns down the International Foods aisle. “Is it not already handled? I said what I said.”

“You didn’t say anything yet. Do you want print or TV?”

“What?”

A long-suffering sigh. “People want to interview you, Rich. Bunch of publications I’ve never even heard of, but also a few that we both have. Could be good.”

“Oh.” Fuck. Another thing Richie probably should have anticipated: having to articulate their sense of self. How to do that for others when it feels impossible even in his own head? “Uh, I don’t know, what looks most promising?”

“Do you remember that guy you met at that party the last time you were in New York?”

Richie snorts, which earns them a look from the employee stocking the salsa jars. “Yeah, of course I do,” they say, flat.

“You said he was like the human version of that Candyland board game?”

“Oh, Mike O’Hara?” It hadn’t been a party, really, more of an impromptu bar crawl involving a bunch of comedians and friends. O’Hara had been a huge fan of the Voices, which is maybe the only reason Richie remembers him at all. “He’s a good guy.”

“He wants you as a guest on his podcast. He does culture commentary shit, and I figured you’d prefer someone you already know. You feeling up to that?”

“Fuck yeah,” Richie says. “I love getting to talk without anyone perceiving my flesh.”

“See, when you say it like that, it sounds so much more horrible.”

“That’s my one true talent, Stevie.”

“Fuck off. I’ll tell the guy you’re in. Read your goddamn emails, okay? That’s how he’ll reach out.”

“Roger that.” They hang up without saying goodbye. The only thing in Richie’s basket is a four-pack of cream soda and a package of taco shells. 

He sighs and doubles back to the sushi counter.

*

So. One shoe has dropped: the world knows. Richie assumes that his friends will be next.

But the Losers…never bring it up.

At first Richie wonders if they just haven’t seen the news yet, but it makes headlines a lot faster than he thought it would, and enough people are tweeting about it that there’s no way at least Bev (chronically online) or Bill (annoyingly in-the-know at all times) haven’t run across it.

But none of them _say_ anything.

Outside reactions continue to pile in. Richie gets, like, ten rude indirects on Twitter for every heartfelt DM. That one actor from _Inception_ makes a really sweet and supportive post that Richie screenshots just to keep. Someone writes a thinkpiece about forgiveness in the queer community, which is a thinly-veiled excuse for the author to vent about how much he hates Richie’s old stand-up. But that’s understandable. Richie also hates their old stand-up. 

Steve keeps fielding requests for interviews, and Richie sets a date with the podcast guy to come on his show for a chat. Enters it on his phone calendar. Tries to tell himself that it’s going to be fine.

And all of this, somehow, stays separate from his daily interactions with Eddie and the Losers.

It never comes up in the group chat. Bill doesn’t mention it when he calls to vent about his editor. Mike sends photos of alligators with absolutely no commentary.

It’s fine.

Beverly and Ben sweep back into the city at the end of the month, which means another movie night at Richie’s place. This time Eddie joins them, which makes it the best one so far (in Richie’s humble opinion). Eddie tries to put his foot down about watching _Jupiter Ascending_ again, but at this point it’s tradition; the ensuing shouting match almost gets the four of them kicked out of the 32nd street Trader Joe’s. Richie narrowly manages the find a compromise by making it a double-feature with the new _Star Wars._

“I can’t believe you’re letting your new relationship destroy the sanctity of movie night,” Bev says as they make their way back to the apartment, laden with snacks. “You’ve changed, Rich.”

“You betcha,” Richie says. He’s carrying two six-packs of hard cider but he still manages to sling an arm around Eddie’s shoulders and give him a messy kiss on the cheek. Eddie just grins.

This time, Ben gets up to act out his favorite scenes of _Jupiter Ascending,_ pulling Bev up with him even though she has a much more tenuous grasp on the dialogue. Richie’s in hysterics. Halfway through they order a pizza, which shows up just after the opening sequence of _Rogue One._ Eddie’s fucking entranced—he was always a _Star Wars_ fan as a kid, a fact that Richie forgot but remembers now with fondness. 

He still gets snapshots of memory sometimes, and tonight they’re of Eddie swinging around a stick and making lightsaber noises, Eddie dressed as Luke Skywalker for Halloween. 

He wishes they had the sort of parents they could call up and ask for photos; he’ll have to content himself with scraps of memory. That’s fine. That’s enough.

There’s a question in Beverly’s eyes the whole night. Richie can see it in the way she glances at him and Eddie when they bicker and laugh. She waits until the movies are over to accost Richie when he’s putting their bottles in the recycling. “So,” she says, damn near giving Richie a heart attack; he didn’t hear her come into the kitchen. “You two figured out your shit, huh?”

“Jesus, you scared me.” Richie clasps a hand to their chest. “Asshole. Is this an intervention?”

Bev leans against the fridge and crosses her arms. “I don’t think you need one. You seem happy.”

“No, come on, I can’t do this sappy shit,” Richie says desperately. “Not after _Rogue One._ What’s wrong with you? Do you like seeing me cry? Is this some sick fetish for you?”

“You think I need your tears to get off?” Bev asks impatiently. “Have you _seen_ Ben’s arms?”

“Touché.”

Bev pushes her hair out of her eyes and bites her bottom lip, like she’s trying to decide what to say next. “You look at Eddie like you’re worried he’ll disappear,” she says slowly. “Like you half expect him to be gone every time you turn around.”

Richie still does not want to be perceived.

“Just takes some getting used to,” they say with a defensive shrug. “He went from blowing me off on a weekly basis to basically living with me. Enough to give a guy whiplash.”

“I mean. Rich.” She gives him a piercing look. “You know why he did that, don’t you?”

“No,” Richie says, and he focuses really hard on the bottle in his hands.

“Infidelity can really fuck up divorce proceedings,” Bev says bluntly.

Richie almost drops the bottle. _“What?_ But we weren’t—"

“I know,” she says. “Probably by design. You know what Eddie’s like. He has to take himself through every outcome before he can make a single move.”

 _He’s less like that now,_ Richie wants to say, but Beverly isn’t done.

“He considered it enough of a risk that he kept his distance. It was smart, really.” Her smile is crooked. “Legally, I didn’t do myself any favors by shacking up with Ben right away.”

This is making Richie’s stomach hurt. “Did he—your ex, he didn’t—?”

“He did,” she cuts him off. “But we’re not talking about that, okay?”

Richie nods. “Jesus,” he says awkwardly, trying to find the right words. “I wasn’t going to jump him on sight. I do have some self-control. It may seem like I’m a raging fuck-machine, but—”

“Oh, honey,” Beverly says, and her smile is huge. “I don’t think Eddie was worried about you at all. I think he was worried about himself.”

Richie squints. “Unpack that for me a little bit.”

“You’re smart enough, you figure it out,” Bev says, and then kisses Richie on the cheek. “We should get going. It’s late.”

“It is,” Richie says, “but I feel like you’re using that as an excuse to get out of this conversation, _Beverly.”_

“I would never!”

“You’re a fucking liar who lies.”

“Richie,” she says, and her eyes are so beautiful when they dance with laughter. “It’s good. We’ve got your back. It all gets to be good from here on out.”

 _Promise?_ He doesn’t say it. Instead he raises his voice, just a little, and says, “Not if Eddie ate that last slice of pizza already.”

An indignant noise comes from the living room. “Bitch! I _asked!”_

Eddie stays over that night. He falls asleep fast, something that he once said only happens when Richie is around. Richie doesn’t quite know what to do with that. They stay awake for a while, counting airplanes out the window. There are so many of them going over the city.

Eventually, they fall asleep.

It doesn’t last.

The nightmares come less often these days, but they do come. Richie hollers himself awake in the dark hours of the morning, thrashing in terror, all internal sensors flashing _get away get away get AWAY—_

He bolts upright and shrieks when his forehead collides with something very, very hard.

“Ow, _fuck!”_

He knows that voice. He knows he knows he knows—

The lamp clicks on. Richie winces, holding up a hand to keep the light from stabbing him straight in the eyeballs. Behind his fingers is the shape of a familiar body. “Eddie?” he croaks.

Eddie climbs back on the bed and takes Richie’s face in his hands. “You good, man?” His dark eyes are wide and worried.

“Nightmare,” Richie manages. “Fuck. Sorry.” His forehead is throbbing. “Did I hurt you?”

“You drove your head straight up into my chin,” Eddie says, with just a touch of dryness. “I just about bit my damn tongue off.”

Richie blinks. His eyes are still fighting to adjust, and looking at Eddie’s face hurts. “Sorry,” he says again, gruff.

“It’s fine, Rich. No lasting damage.” Eddie smooths Richie’s hair back over his ears. “You’ve got one hell of a hard head, though. I know we’ve always said so but goddamn.”

Richie manages one short laugh. They tip forward to rest their head on Eddie’s collarbone. He’s wearing a white t-shirt, one of Richie’s. It gapes open around his neck. He smells clean, familiar. Richie takes a deep breath in and winds their arms around Eddie’s waist.

“If I think too hard about that one paradox,” Richie says, after a soft silence, “the fucking, butterfly one? I’ll absolutely lose my mind.”

Eddie huffs. “Walk it back a few steps, Tozier. It’s 4am and I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

“It’s a famous paradox,” Richie insists. “This guy dreams about being a butterfly, but then he wakes up and asks, am I a man who had a dream about being a butterfly? Or am I a butterfly, having a dream about being a man?”

Another moment of silence as Eddie mulls this over. “Was that what you were screaming about, then?” he asks, lightly teasing. 

Richie pushes their face into Eddie’s neck and closes their eyes as tight as they can. “No.”

“For what it’s worth,” Eddie says, still running his fingers through Richie’s hair, “I’m pretty sure this is real.”

“Only _pretty_ sure?”

Eddie shrugs. “I think we can all be forgiven for some suspicion of reality,” he says slowly. “We’ve seen too much. But you feel real to me, and it’s a good feeling. So, yeah. Anything else can fuck right off.”

That gets Richie to laugh, and he finally leans back to meet Eddie’s eyes. “Sorry for waking you up.”

“That’s okay.” Eddie scoots back on his knees a bit, so he’s not fully in Richie’s lap. “Want me to turn the light back off?”

“It might be a while before I fall back asleep,” Richie admits.

“We can still talk,” Eddie says. “But it will be easier to drift off if we’re laying down.”

There’s no arguing with that. Eddie clicks off the light and climbs back under the covers. He pokes and prods Richie onto their side and slots in close behind them, draping his arm over Richie’s ribs. Then he presses his nose into Richie’s spine.

It feels familiar, in an old aching way. Like a long-healed bone warning of rain. “Did you ever…” Richie asks, then clears his throat. “Did you sneak into my room at one point, or something? As a kid?”

“You snuck into mine,” Eddie corrects. “The week before you moved out of town.”

“Right.”

The memory struggles to its feet. Sonia had screamed at them both when she found them in the morning, but it had still been worth it. Richie hadn’t meant to fall asleep, hadn’t meant to get so close to Eddie that their bodies fit together like measuring spoons. 

They had talked all night, drifting to sleep just as the sun started to rise. “I thought about that a lot, once you were gone,” Eddie says quietly. “Nothing happened, but it still felt…significant.”

Richie, who had forgotten it very shortly after, doesn’t say anything.

“In hindsight,” Eddie adds dryly, “it shouldn’t have taken me as long as it did to figure out I was gay.”

Richie huffs a small laugh. “When did you know?”

“Never as a kid. There was something—I didn’t have the words for it.” He traces the notch at the base of Richie’s throat with his fingertips. “And then I saw you at the Jade.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Bolt of lightning. Like, _oh, THAT’S what that was?_ I was pissed. Stop laughing at me.”

Richie tangles their fingers with Eddie’s, grinning in the dark. “You’re fucking perfect.”

“I hated the shirt you were wearing—”

“Fuck you, I miss that shirt—”

“And everyone asking if you were _married—”_

“Jesus, how do you think I felt?” Richie asks, turning his head so he can actually look at Eddie. “You actually _were_ married.”

“Yeah. I was.”

Their eyes find each other in the dark. “Not now, though.”

“No. Not now.” Another small silence settles, but not for long.

Richie swallows and finds the nerve to say, “Bev told me you don’t do anything without thinking obsessively about every possible outcome.”

Eddie makes an amused sound. “Oh, yeah?”

“So did you—I mean, were you running scenarios about what would happen? With this?” _With me?_ Richie tries to make a joke, puts on a Voice like a smoke-ravaged gambler. “I’ve got fifty that says he pukes.”

“No,” Eddie says quietly, and he settles his arm more firmly around Richie. “This was the most impulsive thing I’ve ever done. I couldn’t think about it at _all._ I didn’t even—I mean, I wasn’t even planning to come _over_ here that day. I thought I would go to a bar, get smashed, spend the evening alone.”

“That’s depressing as fuck, man. Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“What changed?”

“I got out of my lawyer’s office,” Eddie says, quiet. “Freely divorced and completely fucking alone. And—everything around me was in motion. Pigeons, you know, flying up to perch on the buildings. Taxis going fast. This girl ran past me, and her hair was whipping around with every step. And I just thought—God, am I going to go sit on a barstool? Is that _it?”_

“Eddie,” Richie says, because he needs to say something.

“We moved so much as kids,” Eddie continues. “If the quarry was in front of me I would have fucking jumped, suit and all. I kept thinking about that. I wanted to feel like that.” He presses his face against Richie’s spine again. “So I came here.”

“And did it?” Richie asks. “Feel like that, I mean.”

Eddie’s arm tightens around them. “Rich, it was like fucking _flying.”_

Richie chokes. He twists so he can grab and Eddie and hold him, because _what_ the _fuck._ Eddie lets himself be dragged, and they end up pressed together as much as they physically can be, practically chin to toe. It’s still not enough.

“Fuck you,” Richie says. “Literally fuck you, you’re crazy, how can you just _say_ things?”

Eddie is laughing, soft and low. “What are you gonna do about it?”

“Have you committed,” Richie says, but they say it right into Eddie’s mouth. “You’re an insane man. Hazardous to my health.” The kisses blur into each other, once after the other. Eddie sighs, exhausted and pleased. As much as they don’t want to, Richie can feel their body dipping back towards sleep. “Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really fucking glad you decided to jump.”

One soft kiss to their forehead. “Me too, Richie.”

They fall asleep like that.

*

Richie’s big show approaches much more swiftly than he expected it to. He picked a faraway date intentionally; it’s really fucking rude for the passage of time to keep hauling ass towards him at breakneck speed.

Half his fear stems from the fact that this will be the first show since he was twenty-three that features all of his own material. The other half, of course, is about the fact that large chunks of that material are jokes about his shiny brand-new gender. It’s always easier to bare his soul to a crowd than to his friends, but this time his friends will be _in_ the crowd, and that’s enough to make Richie wish that someone would just stuff a sock right in his Trashmouth. 

But Richie _wants_ to joke about it. People _know,_ and it’s going to look weird if he _doesn’t_ say anything. That doesn’t help much, whenever he imagines Eddie in the audience, frowning in confusion and consternation. But maybe they’ll just keep not talking about it, and everything will be fine. 

Almost worse than that, though, are the _advertisements_ over the place. Richie’s face is on subway posters and the tops of cabs. Maybe he underestimated how big his return would actually be; the club sells out within minutes of tickets going on sale, and Twitter buzzes with people up in his mentions looking forward to his comeback.

Steve was wrong about the open-mic stuff. The hints and teases of new material Richie’s been dropping in random bars have made people even more rabid to find out what he’s doing now. 

Richie wants to deliver. Nothing motivates better than the steely eye of a deadline; in the weeks leading up to the show, they write like a madman. _Dear Eddie—_

Pretty soon it’s the week of the show. The day before the show. The night before, and Richie’s on red fucking alert.

“You’ve done bigger shit than this before,” Eddie points out. They’re sitting on the kitchen floor, and Richie was spiraling but he isn’t anymore, not with a cold glass of water and Eddie’s hand on his ankle. It’s already well past midnight.

“Not the same, when it’s my own material,” Richie says with a shrug. “It’s the difference between being a Muppet and a person, you know? This is gonna be my first show without someone’s hand up my ass.”

Eddie snorts and buries his face in his hands. And Richie feels better, just from making him laugh. They go to bed not long after, and Eddie gives Richie a long, slow kiss when he leaves for work in the morning.

So it’s the day of the show. Richie stays in bed watching movies on their laptop, because they would much rather meditate on fictional problems than their own very real problems. 

Mostly, they just want Eddie to come home. It’s stupid but they miss Eddie when he’s at work. All his pent-up energy, all his unthinking kindness. Something at his very core is still so sweet, even though time and trauma have made the rest of him an easily-riled-up little gremlin who swears a lot and likes to bite. 

He makes Richie coffee in the morning. He holds open doors for everyone, almost as a reflex. He leaves good tips in restaurants. He’ll press a kiss to the top of Richie’s head every time he gets up from the couch. Richie knows that if Eddie ever stopped to think about these things—if anyone ever said, _You’re a good man, Eddie—_ he would stop doing them. 

So Richie doesn’t say a thing. He just loves him, and laughs whenever Eddie gets mean because someone cut him off, or a coworker fucks up a spreadsheet.

Or when his boss keeps him in the office an hour longer than usual, apparently. Eddie comes into the apartment already yelling, and it takes a good minute for Richie to figure out what the hell is going on. 

“I fantasize about pushing him off of the Empire State Building,” Eddie is saying, and Richie laughs from their lazy sprawl on the bed, watching with appreciation as Eddie undoes his tie. “I daydream about poisoning his coffee. I have wet dreams about pushing him in front of a taxi.”

Richie wheezes. “Wet dreams, really? Do I feature in them at all, or does vehicular manslaughter tickle your noodle enough on its own?”

“Tickle my—you’re a war criminal, you know that?”

“Depends. Does that get you hot as well?”

Eddie is still too ticked off to laugh. “He’s just a _nightmare,”_ he all but yells as he undoes the front of his slacks. Richie rolls over to pay closer attention. “God forbid _he_ should ever stay late for five fucking minutes to fix a problem, but he acts like he’s doing me a _favor_ when he dumps bullshit on my desk at the end of the fucking day.” He has great legs, slim and muscular. Richie even likes his stupid black corporate socks, but he likes it better when Eddie peels them off. “Aren’t you going to get dressed?”

It takes a moment for the words to register. “I don’t have to be at the club until seven.”

Eddie frowns as he pulls on one of Richie’s t-shirts. (He’s quick, so quick to cover his chest, out of his suit and into something else, he doesn’t need to be—) “Aren’t we getting dinner with Beverly beforehand?”

“Fuck!” Richie pops up off the bed. “I completely forgot!”

“Why did you think I was upset about being kept at the office!”

“Because that would make anyone upset!”

“Richie! Get dressed!”

And thank god that Richie picked out his show outfit beforehand, because it’s less of a scramble than it would have been to get ready. Clothes are tossed across the room at lightning speed. He’s basically done by the time Eddie has added a blazer over the stolen shirt. He looks incredible, more casual than usual in a way that makes Richie want to eat him alive. 

“You look really good, what the fuck,” Richie says, somehow out of breath.

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he looks fond. “Are you wearing a tie?”

“They make me feel like I’m being strangled.”

“Better save that for later, then.”

“Eddie!” Richie crows with delight and sweeps him up into a big showy kiss. “Sweetheart, how am I supposed to focus on comedy with _that_ delightful image in my mind?”

“Rich—Richie, we gotta go!” Eddie says, laughing as he kisses Richie back. “Get your coat, it’s freezing out. Should we take a taxi?”

In the elevator down, Richie sticks his face in Eddie’s hair, just to be fond and also to be annoying. That’s the only reason he’s close enough to see the text come up on Eddie’s phone. A missive from Bev: _Tell Richie that if they want pre-show coffee they need to shoot me their order!!!_

And he watches Eddie text back: _They take it black with a fuckton of sugar._

Two thumbs-up and a mango in response. Bev is big on emojis. 

So, a rock the size of Mount Rushmore has taken up residence in Richie’s throat. They try to swallow and find that they can’t. The elevator doors open and Eddie steps out like nothing has happened. It’s the casualness of it, maybe, that makes it all the more monumental.

Richie should have known that the Losers would be on top of this shit.

“Rich? You good?” Eddie has one hand on the elevator door to keep it from closing. He’s looking at Richie with a little worried furrow between his eyebrows.

“Huh? Yeah!” They step out of the elevator. 

Eddie cocks his head to one side. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

“I’m not gonna pass out.”

“Is it nerves? For the show?”

“What show?” Richie asks, and then goes off into a laughing jag that has Eddie looking more concerned by the second. Richie leads the way to the door with a grin, wiping a bit of moisture from his eye. 

“Seriously,” Eddie says, as they leave the building and hustle down the steps to the sidewalk. “Are you feeling all right, dude?”

Richie makes an expansive gesture. “I just didn’t realize you guys, like, knew. About. The, uh, stuff.”

“The stuff.”

“The, you know. Gender shit. Or whatever. I thought you guys didn’t know. Or like, didn’t care.”

“You didn’t tell us,” Eddie says, frowning, all doe-eyed. “We didn’t want to bring it up first if you didn’t want to talk about it.”

A consensus like that can only mean one thing. “You fuckers, I knew you had a secret No Richie Allowed group chat.”

Eddie flings his arms in the air, almost taking out a passing pedestrian. “Well we do _now!”_

“I always knew you would betray me.” Richie leads the way down the steps into the subway station. Cold underground air blows in his face. He feels more awake than he can ever remember being.

“You fucking came out on Twitter and not to any of us!” Eddie hisses, fumbling with his wallet to pull out his MetroCard. “We were all like, did you know? Did _you_ know? And none of us knew a fucking thing!”

“I barely came out,” Richie scoffs. “I just added pronouns to my bio, tons of people do that.”

“Still seemed pretty damn significant.”

Their train roars up to the platform, stuffed to the gills. Richie and Eddie sidle on and continue their conversation jammed together. Richie keeps one hand on the subway pole for balance; Eddie keeps one hand on Richie.

“You guys never said anything,” Richie says quietly.

“We were trying to be sensitive, fuckwad.” Eddie says, intense and deadly as a storm over the ocean. “I’m sorry if you felt like you couldn’t talk to us.” He swallows. “Couldn’t talk to me. I wanted you to have the space you needed.”

Richie drops their head down onto Eddie’s shoulder. “I didn’t know how to bring it up,” they confess, quiet. “I kind of just hoped no one would notice.”

That gets a little laugh out of Eddie. “Sweetheart. That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”

They sway together with the motion of the train. “I know.”

“You’re ridiculous. Rich. Look at me?” Richie does. Eddie’s got his eyes and eyebrows out in full force, letting Richie know that he _really means_ what he’s saying. “I’m proud of you. I’d love to know what exactly it all means, but—”

“What, you mean you’re not an expert yet?” Richie cuts in. They’ll take any opportunity to turn this conversation back to jokes so they don’t cry on the fucking subway.

Eddie huffs. “Are you kidding me? I don’t know jack shit about it.”

Richie grins. “Couldn’t even be bothered to do a little research, huh?”

“I wanted to hear it from you,” Eddie says. Oh, fuck, he’s still doing sincerity, isn’t he? “I wanted to know what it means for you.”

“It just means that my gender is comedian,” Richie says, because they cannot fucking manage anything else. 

But it makes Eddie laugh again, which is what Richie wanted. The conversation pauses when they get to their stop and have to push through the doors to the platform. Richie leads the way up the steps to the street; he’s tall. People tend to get out of his way.

“We don’t have to dissect it all tonight,” Eddie says, flipping up his coat collar in an unfairly sexy move as he keeps pace at Richie’s side. “I don’t want to fucking distract you from your show. But I would really, really like to hear about it.”

Richie hunches his shoulders. “I don’t have, like, a ton to say.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, man!”

“You don’t know?”

“I just, I…” Why is this so _hard?_ Richie stares at his feet as he walks. “I just like the way it sounds! It feels comfortable. Like, you know how sometimes you have a t-shirt with a really itchy tag, except you didn’t notice until you were already out in public, so you can’t do anything about it even though it’s driving you crazy? And you feel like you’re gonna claw your own skin off but you’ve gotta be, like, polite and sociable and stuff. Until you get home and put on a different shirt and that irritation is gone? And your shirt is soft and you’re happy to be back in your own space and you don’t have to pretend anything anymore.” He pauses to take a breath. “It, uh. It kind of feels like that.”

They have to stop at the corner to wait for the light. Richie takes another breath and finally looks at Eddie. Eddie stares back for a long moment, and then, almost helpless, he says, “I love you.”

Richie isn’t sure they heard that right.

“I mean, fuck, I’m not trying to—like, one-up what you were saying, or anything,” Eddie rushes to say, and his face is turning red.

“Eddie,” Richie says, and then he starts laughing. “Eds, darling, you disaster. I love you too.”

“No,” Eddie says, and that just makes Richie laugh harder.

_“No?”_

“We’re not talking about that right now, we’re talking about your thing!” It’s truly fascinating how he can yell and smile at the same time. Richie loves it.

“But I _want_ to talk about your thing!” Richie says, because they want to get Eddie to say it again, they want to hear it over and over.

“Too fucking bad,” Eddie says, but he’s still smiling, showing off his teeth and dimples. Richie wants to eat him up with a spoon. “I want you to keep telling me about your thing. I want to hear all about it.”

The light changes. They don’t move, just keep staring into each other’s eyes like this is some goddamn movie. Several other New Yorkers push past them with muttered complaints; Richie doesn’t even hear them. “But can we talk about yours later?” they ask hopefully, and Eddie laughs and holds out his hand.

“Yeah, Rich, we can,” he says. Richie beams and Eddie smiles some more and they finally move to cross the street, hands linked together.

*

_**MIKE O’HARA:** Next up, we’ve got one hell of a guest for you all. You might know him as the first comedian to make a necrophilia joke in front of a sitting U.S. President, or maybe you know them from the coming out double-whammy from this past year. But we’re happy to welcome to the show Richie Tozier!_

_**RICHIE TOZIER:** I have nothing to say in my defense about that necrophilia thing, but he _did _laugh._

_**MO:** It’s great to see you, Rich._

_**RT:** Happy to be here! Your hair looks amazing. Have you switched to virgin sacrifice?_

_**MO:** Burning entrails, actually, and a lot of chanting. Only way I can get my curls to calm down._

_**RT:** I only recently stopped using that, like, 3-in-1 shampoo stuff and _man _has it made a difference._

_**MO:** Don’t tell me you’re getting rid of your trademark bedhead?_

_**RT:** I prefer to call it sex hair, because the people need to know that I fuck. But nah, I’m not changing it up too much. It’s just, like, softer now. I don’t know what a paraben is but I don’t have them anymore._

_**MO:** This podcast is a no-paraben zone. We have a sign on the door and everything. So, Rich! You’ve had quite a year._

_**RT:** You’re telling me._

_**MO:** You had a very public disappearance, which had a couple of us here at the studio worried, I’m not gonna lie. Then you eschewed any sort of major comeback in favor of doing smaller clubs around New York City, where you landed a bunch of new material and, oh yeah, let the world know that you’re not straight._

_**RT:** It was all subtextual._

_**MO:** You described yourself as a gay manifestation of the Shirly Temple Box Set ads._

_**RT:** It’s because I’m relentlessly annoying._

_**MO:** There was also your sold-out comeback show, which is already being hailed as the comedy night of the year, AND rumors of a Netflix special in the works._

_**RT:** Can neither confirm nor deny. I don’t pay for my own Netflix, you know, I still bum off my ex’s._

_**MO:** And on top of all that, you came out as nonbinary on Twitter without, like, telling anyone._

_**RT:** Yeah, I still wonder about that first person who noticed. What the fuck were they looking at my account for? I hadn’t even tweeted that day. Were they double-checking my hairline in my profile pic? Because I do that all the time._

_**MO:** Can you tell us why that was your preferred method of announcing the news?_

_**RT:** I’m going to be level with you, I didn’t have any grand rationale behind it. I just wanted to, and it felt right, and I figured I would deal with the fallout when it happened. Which was less than twelve hours later, of course. But for the most part things have been fine. I mean, there’s always assholes, but the people closest to me really took it in stride. That was the most important thing._

_**MO:** And what about the folks who are saying this is some extended bit?_

_**RT:** They said the same thing when I came out as gay. I fucking wish there were bootlegs of the first set I did after my quote-unquote hiatus. No one fucking knew if they were allowed to laugh at my jokes or not. Occam’s razor, but one side is homophobia and the other side is me being sincere about wanting to gargle the balls of attractive men. Is that how the razor thing works?_

_**MO:** I don’t…think so?_

_**RT:** The simplest solution is the best one. I think that’s it. And the simplest solution here is that I am, indeed, gay as shit. Now listen, I appreciate a running joke. I know a little something about the long con. Let me tell you a story. I had this best friend when I was a kid. I had a crew of best friends, really, but if I start talking about all of them I’ll never stop. So this guy. Little spitfire, big brown eyes, constantly wearing a fanny pack._

_**MO:** Fashion icon._

_**RT:** He could rock it. Now, I was a goblin of a child who never knew when to stop talking, so I was always running my mouth. Trashmouth actually is my nickname from that point in my life, I didn’t create that brand as an adult. And basically my number one joke, my eternal go-to, was a ‘your mom’ joke._

_**MO:** Oh, a classic._

_**RT:** I know, right? You can’t go wrong. Unless you overuse it, which I absolutely did. Beat it to death. Drove my friend bonkers, because he could barely say something about heading home for dinner without me telling him not to bother, his mom hadn’t had a chance to cook because I’d been too busy fucking her all afternoon. That sort of thing._

_**MO:** This is funnier now that we’re know you’re—_

_**RT:** A godless homosexual, yes. Peak comedy! Anyway, I lost touch with all of those friends, and then we reconnected last year for, like, a high school reunion. And that friend of mine, my Brown-Eyed Girl himself, actually ended up getting pretty hurt in an accident._

_**MO:** Oh, Jesus._

_**RT:** He’s fine now. Comedy equals tragedy plus time, so I’m allowed to joke about this. But at the time he was pretty fucked up, and I’m not gonna give you the gory details but there was blood everywhere, or whatever. And this motherfucker is sprawled out, gasping like every breath is going to be his last, and he says Richie. Richie I need to tell you something. So I get closer. I think this bitch is about to die. And he says, right in my face…I fucked your mom._

_**MO:** [prolonged laughter]_

_**RT:** Did you think this was going to be a story about _me _running a long con? Absolutely not! I got my ass handed to me by a dude on death’s door. Inspiring, actually. I channel him every time I go onstage. He’s my pissed-off little muse. What was the point I was trying to make?_

_**MO:** I don’t remember._

_**RT:** Doing things for the bit! Right. I have been known to throw myself into things wholeheartedly just to get a laugh, and I’ll be making jokes about every facet of my personality until I am at the literal point of perishing, but you can rest assured that I’m not joking about this one thing. I’m obnoxious as possible about it, because of who I am as a person, but I actually do identify as a Brony. [choking sounds, laughter] That was an impressive spit take! That was impressive! Man, I wish we had filmed that. Fuck._

_**MO:** [hoarsely] That wasn’t what I expected you to say._

_**RT:** Listen, I don’t fit the type, I know that. But I almost think that’s a good thing, because it’s something that doesn’t need to have a type. There are hundreds of ways to be sexually attracted to cartoon ponies. _

_**MO:** I guess the main thing we can take away from this is that you haven’t changed at all._

_**RT:** I mean, I think I have, but that’s internal shit. I don’t need to haul my guts out on the table for you. For one, it’s no one’s business but mine, and for another, I don’t think you want to see the half-digested remains of the ramen I ate last night._

_**MO:** Yeah, I think I’ll pass. I’d like to keep my lunch. Let’s see, what do you say to the folks who are putting you at the forefront of the initiative to make comedy more inclusive?_

_**RT:** Hell no. Are you kidding? I mean, people want to ask me about the intersection of gender and comedy, and like—really? On some level I get it, but come on, I’m not the one to ask. The fact of the matter is that women in comedy, especially women of color, still have it worse than I do. I skated through for years on being a good bullshitter and just charming enough. By being one of the guys. I’m very aware of that. I’m not suddenly oppressed. You want to talk about that, there are better comics I can point you to._

_**MO:** Is that your crusade for the day?_

_**RT:** Not a crusade, just truth. I lost fans both times I came out and that’s the reality. But I was lucky to have fans in the first place. Even though, you know, apparently a bunch of them sucked. Bye, bitch! Just taking out the trash, one blowjob joke at a time._

_**MO:** If you can’t handle Richie at their blowjob jokes, you don’t—_

_**RT:** [laughing] Yeah, you don’t deserve me at my—what, my other blowjob jokes? My rimming jokes?_

_**MO:** Speaking of which, any response to the reports of romance on the horizon?_

_**RT:** [prolonged laughter] One hell of a segue! Wow. You really got me. That’s fucking hysterical. No, that’s also not really anyone’s business but mine, but I will say that I’m—you know, I’m happy. I’m like, really fucking happy, man. Yeah._

_**MO:** I feel like I should say, for the listeners at home, that Tozier currently has the biggest fucking smile I’ve ever seen in my life._

_**RT:** And that’s your answer, isn’t it? No, seriously, I was threatened with castration if I said anything more about this, but it’s good. It’s really good. Jesus, I’m a sap. Can we edit this out?_

_**MO:** No, come on, give us something sweet. For whoever the lucky guy is._

_**RT:** You think he listens to this shit? Hell no. He likes podcasts run by guys who jerk off to the Business section of the New York Times. If he listens to the interview it will be so he can tell me how much I sound like a dolphin when I talk. Listen, I will say one thing, and it’s this: my boyfriend is a thousand times funnier than I will ever be, and I’m only admitting it because I KNOW he’s not listening. Every day with him is a roast. It’s incredible. I never knew I could get off on being negged so much. _

_**MO:** Sounds like the one guy capable of keeping up with you._

_**RT:** If I have to be sincere for more than three seconds I will literally burst into flames, but yeah. He is._

_**MO:** I’ll stop tormenting you there. We’re really glad you came by for a chat._

_**RT:** Are you kidding? I love this shit. I’m stealing this chair. It’s like perfectly molded to the shape of my ass. _

_**MO:** Richie Tozier, ladies and gentlemen._

_**RT:** And those of us who know better. This is the Trashmouth, signing off!_

_[exit chatter]_

_**MO:** One thing I will say about Richie, now that they’re out of the studio—I’ve never met anyone who laughs as much as they do. We fucking love having them around. Now, coming up next—_

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr at [kvothes](https://kvothes.tumblr.com/tagged/x) / clown twitter at [@nonbinaryrichie](https://twitter.com/nonbinaryrichie)


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